


Brother (Love and Duty)

by zeldadestry



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:48:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek doesn't take anything for granted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brother (Love and Duty)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silk_knickers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silk_knickers/gifts).



Derek doesn’t take anything for granted.

He eats frosted miniwheats soaking in whole milk out of a blue ceramic bowl during a late afternoon snack with John. They sit across from each other at the kitchen table, taking a short break after an hour and a half spent flipping diligently through two week’s worth of newspapers looking for any scraps of information that might be evidence of Skynet’s maneuvers.

Memories appear unbidden but he permits them, for just long enough to look at them head on and then say good bye. Most of them can’t help him, not tactically, not strategically, but, when he’s with John, sometimes he shares the story. The scant words he uses to explain about Kyle feel inadequate, so that he wishes he could just transmit the images in his brain directly into John’s, but, sometimes, after he’s finished talking and looks back at John again, Christ, the kid’s got big eyes, John’s blinking back tears.

 

Sometimes the metal says something so ridiculous that it makes John laugh. Derek and Sarah glance at each other, communicating the same discomfort. Evidence of how little the machine understands about people should terrify John, not amuse him.

One night, when he walks down the hallway to check on John, just to open his bedroom door a sliver and see that everything’s alright, the metal is already there, lounging against the doorframe, watching John sleep. “What the fuck are you doing?” Derek says.

The metal looks at him with Allison’s soft eyes and he wants to tell it, wants to say: I knew the woman whose shape you wear. I knew her and you can never ever fool me, you tin-can traitor, you make me sick. The metal doesn’t answer his question, only bends her knees and elbows slightly, shifts her right foot forward, and draws her abdominals in towards her spine. She gathers herself, in other words, prepares to initiate or defend an attack, a gesture that reminds him of Jesse. Don’t stand in my way, Jesse would say, I know what I’m doing.

On another night, it’s Sarah at John’s bedside when Derek opens the door. She glares at him, walks over to meet him in the hallway and pulls the door slowly shut behind herself. “He’s fine,” she says. Sarah doesn’t bother to use the word safe; both of them know that’s never true.

Sarah, the metal, and himself, all of them claim John as their purpose but none of them trust each other.

John trusts all of them.

 

Derek compartmentalizes easily, except when he’s driving, or cleaning the guns, or running in the hills. Sometimes when he’s preparing, always anticipating what could happen next, but without any clear idea of what actually will, he lets his mind wander. He spaces out and recalls strange, meaningless details from before Judgment Day, like his mother standing in her bare feet on their front steps, tilting her face down to smell an orange flower Kyle picked for her after he’d finished playing soccer at the park. And those moments, so far away and impossible to reclaim for him, might just now be unfolding for his younger self, the boy who belongs here, not the man from the wasteland of the future.

His life before Judgment Day was his own. Afterwards, his life became protecting Kyle until his brother was grown and then his life was, well, his life eventually belonged to John Connor. A trustworthy lieutenant, he wanted and was willing to follow John’s orders, even if he didn’t understand their purpose. He still offered backup when Kyle or Martin Bedell decided to alter mission parameters, but Derek was never the one to suggest doing other than what John asked.

Sometimes, when Derek looks at John, all he can think is: my brother. It’s not ‘my nephew’, it’s not ‘my brother’s son’. He can call John those terms, refer to him that way, they’re both technically correct, both accurate descriptions, but they don’t touch the intensity of what he means to Derek.

He knows who he is: a man who lays down his life for his brother. And he will die for his brother, again and again, however many times he’s sent back through time to do so.

 

Derek doesn’t shy away from the inevitability of his death, no more than he does from the possibility that he will fall short of fulfilling his mission, because he knows there’s too much happening, too many players, too many plans unfolding, for him to be more than one small part of the engine that’s driving them all towards a, god, pray for it, different future. His greatest fear is stopping, giving up because it’s suddenly become too much, because he can’t stand it anymore. He’s been there more than once before, ready to fall on the sword, be it his own or someone, some metal thing, else’s, but that despair has never grabbed hold of him in this world, the world before Judgment Day. Who would, having seen the apocalypse, willing step away from what came before? Before Judgment Day, he never would have called this time, this place, a paradise. Now he knows it’s the closest he’ll ever get to one.

Sometimes when he stops by Jesse’s hotel room, or meets her out by the pool, she offers him whiskey or chocolates, maybe a cigarette. He takes whatever she hands him, he sits beside her and lets his senses indulge again, allows himself to enjoy a buzz, a sugar rush, a nicotine fix.

Sarah watches John when he’s concentrating, when he’s working at his computer, or reading, or taking apart surveillance equipment, or practicing defusing explosives. Sarah stares at him, one hand resting against her flat belly, and sometimes she even smiles, her necessarily stunted version of happiness, one corner of her mouth slightly lifting. “Come on, mom,” John says, when her attention becomes too heavy. “You’re distracting me.”

“Sorry,” Sarah says and, when she crosses the room to leave it, as she passes behind her son’s chair she ruffles the top of his hair.

Sarah loves John. Sarah loves her son. Sarah has never cared about John Connor, future leader of the resistance, as much as she cares about John, her son. Sarah wants Judgment Day stopped so that John is safe, protected. Sarah would kick his ass if Derek ever said so to her, but she is such a fierce soldier because she wants to save John, not because she gives a damn for the rest of humanity.

Derek doesn’t bother to ask himself if he’s any different.

 

Derek sits on the front steps of the house they’re renting, waits for John to come home. “Hey,” he says, when John arrives.

“Hey.” John looks behind Derek, into the empty house.

“Your mom’s not here.”

“In that case, share your beer.” Derek’s slow to hold out the bottle, but John’s quick to take it. “Thanks,” he says, twisting off the cap. He sits down next to Derek and drinks half of it. “Friggin’ hot today.” He raises a hand to his forehead. “The sun doesn’t bother you?” Derek shrugs. If there are other timelines, if the future has already changed, and will continue to change, with choices they make, actions they undertake, then who they are now is all they can ever be. Kyle is dead, but Kyle is sitting right here beside Derek, because John is part of Kyle, too. Derek reaches out and swipes the bottle away from John. “Dude,” John says, “what’s your problem?”

“We shouldn’t. It was stupid.”

“Yeah, because if a terminator suddenly appears and starts shooting-”

“It can happen anywhere, anytime. We both know that.”

John frowns. “I’m not an idiot. I can handle myself. You’re the one getting tipsy, anyway.”

“Hell,” Derek says, “I’m no lightweight.” He is, though, feeling it a little, probably because he hasn’t had anything to eat today, but he’s not ready to stop yet.

“You get the irony here, right?” John says, stretching a hand out towards his beer again, but Derek keeps it out of reach as he finishes his own.

“Irony?” he says, and belches, and laughs.

John laughs, too. “See, dude, don’t you see it? This, right here, we gotta have this, times when we’re sloppy, times when we’re stupid.”

“Sloppy and stupid? That equals dead.”

“Yeah, yeah, and I keep my guard up, I really do. But never doing anything I want to, only doing what I have to-” Derek gets to his feet and John follows him down the stairs. They circle each other in the dirt of the driveway until John manages to spin Derek around and twist his right arm behind his body, jerking the beer out of his left hand. Derek could have kicked back against John’s shins, or stomped on his feet, or thrown his head back so that his skull collided with John’s face, but he didn’t really want to win the skirmish. He wants what he has when John lets go of him, when they’re facing each other again. John smirks at Derek, toasting him with the bottle he’s finally taken back, before he lifts it to his lips and drinks it all down. “I like knowing I’m different than they are,” John says, wiping his wet mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t want to fuck up but, if I do, at least it reminds me of what I am.”

“And what’s that?”

“Human.” They sit down again, open a couple more bottles, and John listens as Derek tells him more stories from his own life, from Kyle’s, from both before and after Judgment Day. And when Derek falls silent, John takes over, recalls a few of the dozens of places he’s lived, how none of them were ever a home, but all of them had something or someone he was sorry to leave. It’s too soon when Cameron and Sarah pull up in front of the house. The metal watches, like it is always watching, without sleep, without sympathy. Derek doesn’t like to remember that, of the four of them fighting together, he and the metal are the two who have seen the world John and Sarah are struggling to prevent.

In unspoken agreement, John and Derek collect the bottles and head inside to drop them into the recycling bin under the kitchen sink. “Thanks,” John says, leaning back against the counter.

Derek looks at John’s lean, pale body, wonders what scars he’ll pick up over the next month, year, decade. “For what?”

John shrugs. “Just- you know. For being here.”

There is a hurt that never leaves John’s eyes. There is a strength there, too. Derek reaches out a hand and rests it over John’s narrow shoulder. What makes Derek who he is in the future? Is it these moments here, when the overwhelming obligation, responsibility, suddenly dissolves, when he understands not how much his help is needed but how much he wants to give it? He wants to share the burden, even if nothing they do is enough in the end. “You’re not thanking me for being your soldier, are you?” Derek asks, and brings his other hand up, curls both his hands around John’s upper arms.

“No.” John presses his lips together, but then continues on, his voice quiet. “Thank you for being family.”

Derek keeps his shit together long enough to gruffly say, “Yeah, yeah, of course, John. Of course.”

The front door slams shut and Sarah calls out for her son. John bumps fists with Derek before he leaves his side.

Derek stands alone in the middle of the room and drops his head, covers his eyes, fighting down the tightness across his chest and the ache in his throat. Kyle, Martin, Jesse. John. Ours is not to wonder why, he taunts himself, ours is just to do and die. But he does know why. The foundations of his loyalty are inseparable: love and duty, soldered into one.


End file.
